Technical Thoughts, Tutorials, and Musings

As people spent the weekend trying to memorialize the 9/11 terrorist attack's 10th anniversary, I was reminded not of 9/11/2001, but of 9/11/2002.

For the first anniversary, a friend of mine asked me to write something for a memorial web site he was putting together. I do not know if that site still exists, so I have replicated it here in its entirety:

If you're going to be at DrupalCon London, watch for Watchdog issue #2 in your swag bag! It looks like I may have as many as three articles in it, discussing mobile web design, Drupal 7's improved node access system, and how to approach the "Drupal stack" when planning a new site. I'll also be on stage talking about Code Smells and how to avoid stinky code, plus teaming up with Peter Wolanin to talk about what it means to work with Free Software.

Any time a given Drupal core development cycle is more than six months old, people start asking "When will Drupal X be released?" The answer, of course, is always "When it's ready. Please help us finish it." That's well and good, and I don't propose that we change that position. Volunteer labor and fixed release calendars do not mesh well.

However, knowing when Drupal will come out, at least in a vague sense, is increasingly important for core developers. The web is changing rapidly, even more rapidly than it has in the past, and knowing what the web will look like around when Drupal 8 is released is critical. Not only so that we can target the right features to get ahead of the curve, but so that we even know what our available tools are.

Session submissions are open for DrupalCon London, in case you hadn't heard. But what should we be talking about?

Once again, I'm going to solicit ideas from the community (that means you).

Naturally my main work these days is the Web Services and Context Core Initiative for Drupal 8. However, that probably won't be main-track session material by London, and I am already slated to present an update on that front as part of London's Core Conversations track.

In recent years, I've been developing an ongoing "Architecture Series" at DrupalCons. My intent is to help Drupalers around the world raise the bar in terms of software architecture and design. So far, I've covered:

If you haven't been living under a rock, you know that AT&T is trying to buy T-Mobile. This is a generally bad thing, as we already have far too much consolidation in the wireless carrier market as is, but that doesn't mean it's not still likely to happen. The only blocker is approval from the FCC, who is, per policy, soliciting public feedback. (It's 11-65.)

I would encourage everyone to sign in and voice their opposition. More carrier consolidation is not what we need. I've included my own public comments below for reference. Feel free to borrow liberally.

At DrupalCon Chicago, Dries announced that the development process for Drupal 8 would be a bit different. Rather than a vast dog pile of efforts to improve Drupal in ways big and small, Drupal 8 will feature a number of major "core initiatives". These initiatives highlight major areas of work that represent not just a patch or three but major changes to Drupal's plumbing. Each initiative will have one or two initiative leads who have the ability to coordinate and make decisions relating to that initiative while working closely with Dries. In a large sense, it is a way for Dries to scale; Rather than Dries having to keep track of 1000 ongoing conversations himself, initiative owners can coordinate related changes while Dries coordinates the initiative owners. It also gives a clear indication of what work is happening and what to expect out of Drupal 8.

The first initiative for Drupal 8 has already been announced; Greg Dunlap will be leading the charge to overhaul Drupal's configuration system to provide more robust, performant, and deployable configuration and change management. That will be critical for Drupal's future as we push further into the corporate and enterprise sphere, as well as enabling more robust and unified configuration handling in the first place.

Drupal's CVS repository was pronounced dead this Thursday 24 February at 6:08 pm US Eastern Time. Cause of death was reported acute age combined with an inability to properly merge. CVS is survived by approximately 7000 Drupal projects and a new farm of Git repositories.

I've spoken a great deal recently about architectural priorities. In short, we as software developers cannot eat our cake and have it too. Improving flexibility in one area may hurt performance, while improving usability one another area may hinder flexibility. These trade-offs are not necessarily right or wrong, except in the context of the goals and purpose of the project with respect to its target audience.

But what is Drupal's target audience, and how does that impact our architectural decisions?

In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementers over specifiers over theoretical purity.

That may be a good priority order; it may be bad. That depends on your point of view and your goals. It lays out the order in which different stakeholders should be listened to, and if you come to a decision where you have to screw one group over to benefit another how that decision should be made. Having such a clear understanding of your constituent priority is critical to making good, consistent architectural decisions.

What I believe is usually missing from these discussions, and what I hope to offer here, is a broader picture view of the underlying assumptions that lead to different conclusions about when different visibility is appropriate (if ever).

In short: It's the difference between procedural-think and object-think.